8/29/2005

He could have been the seventy-ninth.It was his first job, and he couldn't sleep.After the moon rose, he stared through the windowinto the backyard, which he'd just mowed, to thecreek, overgrown with sumacs and maples.

He heard the tires slick by in the rain,walked past his parents' door, and listenedto the sound his father made, the breathing.His father worked daylights at the facebut already he couldn't sleep lying down.

His mother looked tired in the kitchen lightfrom the dust– but more from contendingwith everything else. "Your bucket's ready.Eat something." He looked into his handsand then the boy spoke"I could get a job

in the glass plant or the carbon factory."More hoot-owl traffic went by in the rainand one of the cars pulled into the drive.For a moment, she stared at her sonas if she were giving him a bath and needed

to study his body for cuts or bruises.Then she got up, breaking the watch,and waved the car on. It sped off, late now,for hoot-owl shift at Consol Number Nine.Five months later, the mine kept exploding

even after they sealed the portal with concreteand steel–on the other seventy-eight.